Quick Hands-On Review Of The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 (Video)

As many of you know, Samsung recently held an event in New York unveiling their US edition of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 where we were able to get a quick hands-on before they allowed us to bring one of these bad boys home to play with. If you haven’t already, check out our unboxing of the device here. The super thin tablet is a happy medium for those desiring more than a 7-inch tab but not quite wanting a 10.1-inch device. The tablet weighs in at just 447 grams and is super thin at 8.6mm beating out the iPad 2. With an 8.9-inch WXGA (1280 x 800) display sporting gorilla glass and a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core CPU under the hood, this device is sure to capture the hearts of many. Its battery life is unprecedented thanks to its whopping 6100 mAH battery. The device launches with Android Honeycomb 3.1 with an updated version of the Samsung TouchWiz UX overlay and compliments the OS with a nice delicate balance. Not too intrusive and not too transparent. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 has all of the bells and whistles one could expect just like its big brother the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and will run you $469 for a 16 gig model and $569 for the 32 gig. Unfortunately, there is no support for sd cards as there is no sd card slot available on the device, so choose your model accordingly. In addition, this is a WiFi only device so a hot-spot is required at all times. Furthermore, there is still only just a 3 meg camera accompanied by a single LED flash.

If it’s entertainment you want, it’s entertainment you got. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 comes with a plethora of goodies for you to keep you occupied in the form of Hubs, such as the Media Hub for movie watching, a Music Hub offering over 13 million songs to choose from and a Reader’s Hub with access to over 2 million books, magazines and news papers. In addition, they’ve added their popular Social Hub giving you access to all the Facebook and Twitter one can handle. All of your standard Google services and of course the Android Market will be available as well. The device offers a number of security features for those looking to use the tab in a corporate or business setting. There’s support for personal productivity, such as, AllShare content transfer and the new “Find My Mobile” software which allows you to use the device’s GPS to track it on a map, should you ever lose the device or someone ‘accidentally borrows” it. Overall, there are quite a number of options with this Tab and for the price tag, you’ll agree that you’re getting a decent bang for your buck. Check out our quick review below and don’t forget to let us know what you think in the comments below. You can hit us up on our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter for more updates and reviews.

Joe was born in New Jersey and spent most of his childhood moving around from state to state. He eventually made his way to Pennsylvania where he met his Portuguese beauty and made her his wife. He now has three great kids and full access to all of the Portuguese food he can eat. Joe's love for mobile technology began when he bought his first Palm Pilot, a Palm M130 and left it on top of his car, driving off, causing it to smash into a thousand pieces. Forced to buy a new device, he quickly discovered that specs were changing so rapidly he was buying a new device every six months just to keep up. Since then, he has constantly felt the need to have the latest and greatest. When the "smartphone" revolution began and integrating cell phones and PDA's was the norm, he quickly jumped to Windows Mobile for several years until the first Android device was launched, the T-Mobile G1. Joe began appreciating all of the free utilities Google provided and sold his soul (his precious data) to Google long before they got into the mobile OS business. So, there was no hesitation at all for him to jump on board and ride the Android train as an early adopter. And boy has it been a blast. Joe now works in the Engineering & Operations dept for a major mobile carrier where he remotely troubleshoots cell sites and loves being an Editor for TalkAndroid.